Sunday morning. Time to do Chuck chores, which include taking care of my laundry. I’ve blogged in the past about finding a decent laundromat for my clothes, and I think I found a good one in Watervliet. So Sunday morning meant bringing a bag full of dirty clothes to the wash ‘n fold, walking over to the neighboring Dollar Tree for a few supplies while the clothes washed, returning in time to put the clothes in the dryer, and then chilling out for a while until my clothes were clean and toasty dry.
While I was in the process of “chilling out,” I noticed one of those Pennysaver magazines on a table. These are the magazines that are full of coupons and promotional offers. Hmm. Here’s an offer for 10% off at a Chinese Buffet in Albany. Well, working on my laundry can get me a tad peckish. And 10% off is 10% off.
So after I brought my clean clothes home and put them away, I drove to Wolf Road for some Chinese Buffet food.
The food was … charitably, I’d say it was okay. If you needed to eat, it was edible. If you were looking for gourmet cuisine, it was … edible.
And of course, as it is a Chinese buffet, the walls contained plenty of Chinese iconography – pictures of pagodas, drawings of flying dragons, all that stuff. There were even Chinese messages imprinted on the table countertops.
As I’m noshing on some peanut chicken (or sesame chicken, or teriyaki chicken, I’m not sure which), I thought about those Chinese symbols on the table. Was this a secret message? Was this some Zen koan or witty Confucius truism? Or was it some wry dig at Americans who think it’s a cute Chinese phrase and actually means “Stupid eats at this table”?
Trust me, I’ve bungled translations before. And I’ve blogged about the experience. Because, yeah, I did.
But that blog post was eleven years ago. And my cell phone has Google Translate on it.
So I held up the phone to the Chinese message on the table …
Okay, cell phone … tell me what I’m seeing here.
“A flower-shaped bowl conveys love.” Aww … that’s sweet.
What wasn’t sweet was that I got charged the dinner price for my lunch (apparently Saturdays and Sundays are all-day dinner at this place, so what I thought was a $15 couponed lunch turned into a $20 couponed meal).
And at no time did it come with a flower-shaped bowl.
But at least I confirmed that the Chinese script isn’t just some decorative characters. It’s actually words and phrases. Meaningful words and phrases.
Maybe that’s worth the price of the meal itself.
Chuck The Writer 